Michael McKenna; 29/9/09
Afghan asylum-seekers who were aboard a boat that blew up off Ashmore Reef in April are depressed and showing signs of psychological trauma from their extended detention. A police investigation into the cause of the explosion, which killed five and injured dozens more, has delayed an Immigration Department decision on their applications for refugee status. Twenty of the 42 survivors have been held in a Brisbane detention facility for almost six months – twice the 90-days that the Immigration Department has set as the statutory limit to process asylum-seekers who arrive on the Australian mainland. A spokesman for the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, confirmed the police investigation was causing the delays.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26139134-5013404,00.html; http://www.theage.com.au/national/boat-people-bluffing-us-says-joyce-20090928-g987.html
Big White Lie; John Fitzgerald; UNSW Press; pp 65-69
Immigrants, clubs and merchants
The two different kinds of civic associations or clubs that worked with headmen in operating the credit-ticket system — native-place associations (also called district clubs) and secret societies — appear to have played a similar role in the Australian colonies to those in California in mediating relations between immigrants and their creditors in China and Hong Kong. New arrivals in California were obliged to register with native- county clubs, which kept extensive records of immigrants and their creditors.
None were permitted to return to China until they had repaid their debts at both ends.
The system was policed through agreements between the clubs and shipping companies operating on the China line under which the companies would refuse passage to those intending to return to China without written certification from the relevant club that they had cleared their debts.
Native-place associations in Australia continued to operate similar agreements with casual arrivals from China into the 1930s. Few Chinese immigrants considered this practice a form of labour bondage.
They looked upon native-county associations and secret societies as benevolent agencies devoted to securing their welfare and helping with their repatriation if and when they were called upon to do so. As in California, the role of these societies in overseeing repayment of debts in the Australian colonies was considered a mark of trust rather than of bondage.
The moral authority of secret society networks bore little relation to the myths of bondage or slavery by which white Australians characterised them. The dominant Yee Hing brotherhood cultivated an ethic of equality, camaraderie, mutual assistance and independence from the constraints of the hierarchical society of late imperial China.
In practice, merchant houses, native-place associations and secret societies worked closely in overseeing the seamless operation of the credit-contract system, in some cases under the direction of a single individual.
Lowe Kung-Meng of Melbourne operated one of the largest credit-ticket networks in the Australian colonies, with immigration services extending beyond Victoria to Perth in Western Australia, Townsville in the north and Wellington and Dunedin in New Zealand.
Lowe wore many hats. He was at once a wealthy merchant, a leading member of the Yee Hing secret society network and, remarkably, both a member of the See Yap Native Place association and the chief benefactor of the rival Sam Yap Association. A native of See Yap himself, Lowe sponsored the construction of the Sam Yap association building in Little Bourke Street in Melbourne.
The wealthy Sydney merchant Way Kee played a similar role in New South Wales and Tasmania, and his nephew Way Lee (Ye Shouhua) in South Australia and the Northern Territory. Shirley Fitzgerald records that Way Kee was born around 1824 in Doong Goong County and died in Sydney in 1892 at the age of 68.
Although he spent his adult years in Australia he maintained close links with his home county community and merchant houses in Hong Kong over four separate visits to China. He first entered Australia in his teens, in the 1850s, and by dint of talent and contacts was appointed to serve as treasurer of the Koong Yee Tong (an association servicing mainly Doong Goong natives) for more than 30 years from the late 1850s to the early 1890s.
In the 1880s he leased properties at 164-168 Lower George Street where he built three shops ad residential complexes.
He also ran stores in Goulburn Street in Sydney and in four rural towns in New South Wales, and maintained business interests in Tasmania. Way Kee regularly represented the Chinese community to white Australian society. He was one of several leading Sydney Chinese businessmen who signed an ornate scarlet address presented to William Lygon, Earl Beauchamp, when the earl assumed office as NSW governor in 1890.
Way Kee also had extensive interests abroad. By his own estimation half of his business was conducted with Hong Kong, the other half presumably with sites in eastern Australia. In 1890 alone he remitted gold to the value of £10-12000 to Hong Kong, including many small remittances on behalf of Chinese-Australian residents. Shortly before his death he was joined in Sydney by his family, including his wife, his grandson and his grandson’s wife.
The 1891 Royal Commission into Gambling confirmed his benevolent work in assisting the poor and returning the bodies of the dead to China, for which he was highly regarded within the community. Way Kee’s funeral on 4 September 1892 brought 3000 Chinese Australians onto the streets of Sydney. After a Christian funeral service conducted by the Reverend Yong Choy his procession moved along George Street to the town hall, stopping commerce and traffic along the route. The Balmain Premier Brass Band led the way with a rousing rendition of The Dead March, and the Naval Volunteer Artillery Brass Band covered the rear of the procession.
Way Kee’s hearse, drawn by six horses, led three mourning carriages and an estimated 250 Sydney horse-drawn cabs, each laden with mourners, followed by hundreds of sombre pedestrians wearing their finest suits and hats. The procession ended at the harbour where Way Kee’s body was taken aboard the Tsinan for burial in China.
A Chinese ceremony, presided over by Chow Yum, Quen Jah, Mook Sing, Lee Soon and Jar Man, was conducted on the wharf. The eminent tea merchant Quong Tart arranged the ceremony at an estimated cost of £1000.
Way Kee’s nephew Way Lee accompanied his body on the Tsinan to China. Way Lee was a successful businessman in his own right, with extensive interests in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland as well as New South Wales.
He was a prominent Yee Hing member, a master Freemason of the British order and a mandarin of the fourth rank in China’s late-imperial honours system. Way Lee used his good offices to lodge petitions with the South Australian parliament to reform immigration legislation and to bring the Yee Hing network under the purview of ‘the legislation at present controlling friendly, benefit and other secret societies’, which was introduced in South Australia to cover British Freemasonry.
In accordance with a common practice among Chinese living abroad, Way Kee and Way Lee were both known and remembered by the names under which their companies traded in Australia: the Way Kee Company and Way Lee Company.
Their common surname was Yip (Ye).
Both were members of a powerful lineage from Doong Goong County, which maintained extensive interests in the British Straits settlements as well as in Hong Kong, China and Australia.
Leading merchants such as Lowe Kung Meng, Way Kee and Way Lee drew on local and international networks of trust to secure their investment in labour immigration.
They appointed headmen to assist on the voyage out, to oversee their charges’ employment on arrival, and to ensure the timely repayment of money borrowed for the passage.
Many if not most of these headmen were drawn from the merchants’ and the workers’ own lineage systems. Some headmen were influential in their own right, sponsoring and raising young relatives and neighbours to succeed them in their business and immigration networks.
Quong Tart, for example, came to Australia as a child of nine in the company of an uncle who acted as headman for a shipload of labourers from the See Yap county of Toishan to the Braidwood goldfields. In all likelihood Quong Tart’s uncle was, after the style of the day, selected from among the sponsoring merchants’ secret society or local lineage networks and selected his party of workers from among the same Toishan networks.
Individual headmen typically supervised between five and 30 labourers, in exceptional cases supervising 100 or more at a time. Headmen worked with merchant houses and fraternal associations in Hong Kong and Guangdong to recruit the working parties and to pay their passage, maintain order, secure employment on arrival and, as noted, to ensure that the members of their team repaid their passage before they moved on.
They were on the whole responsible men, reasonably fluent in English and showed a considerable capacity for leadership.
A contemporary British commentator remarked that the appointment of headmen who were respected by their charges and responsible for their employment, conduct and welfare abroad, was a welcome development over the indentured labour system.
Tags: Australia, China, Human Rights, Migrants & Refugees